This conference has been called for at a time when Israel’s state terrorism is being exposed to the world. Israeli police, military and fundamentalist settler lynch mobs have been savagely attacking Palestinian protestors and committing crimes with impunity.

Encouraged to do so by the racial incitement of Israeli leaders (seehereandhere), large numbers of ordinary Israelis are increasingly praising and calling for attacks and killings of Palestinians (hereandhere). Recently, an Eritrean asylum seeker at an Israeli bus stop was mistaken for a Palestinian assailant and subsequentlyshot and beaten to deathby an Israeli “lynch mob”in full sight of Israeli soldiers.

The conference’s main venue, the Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus Campus, partly sits in an Israeli colony built on Palestinian land occupied after 1967. Mount Scopus campus buildings and facilities were expanded as a result of Israel’s 1968 illegal confiscation of 3345 dunums of Palestinian land, which is deemed occupied territory under international law.[1]

At a time when the international movement to boycott Israeli academic and cultural institutions is gaining ground in response to Israel’s flagrant and persistent infringement of Palestinian human and political rights, we urge scholars and professionals to reflect upon the implications of taking part in a conference organized by complicit institutions and taking place in a colony on occupied land.

Based on the above, and unless the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS) relocates its conference from Israel, and its colonies, and sheds its institutional Israeli sponsorship, PACBI calls on:

1)Scholars, UN officials and people of conscience to boycott this conference and refrain from lending their names to covering up Israel’s serious violations of international law;

2)Academic associations to discourage their members from participating in this conference, and to take a public stance against it.

[1]The decision was published in the official Israeli Gazette (the Hebrew edition), number 1425. It was therefore "legalized" by Israel. This land, for the most part, was (still is) privately owned by Palestinians living in that area. A large part of the confiscated land was then given to the Hebrew University to expand its campus (mainly its dormitories). The Palestinian landowners refused to leave their lands and homes arguing that the confiscation order of 1968 was illegal. When the case was taken to the Jerusalem District Court in 1972 (file no. 1531/72), the court ruled in favor of the University and the state, deciding that the Palestinian families must evacuate their homes and be offered alternative housing. See alsohttp://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/12/un-report-accuses-israel-of-pushing-palestinians-from-jerusalem-west-bank/